Lowernog Place-names Proximity to Coroticus' Alclud
After getting all excited about the connection of Coroticus of Strathclyde with a fox, which seemed to point to him as Uther father of Madog the Fox, I decided to make sure nothing had been missed in the surrounding place-names.
Good thing I did so!
Not far to the ESE of Coroticus' Alclud in Glasgow, there is an ancient site known as Balornock. Not far NW of Alclud there is a Balernock. The place-names are discussed here:
lowern,*lewïrn, (both m) IE *wlop- > eCelt *lop- + -erno- > Br, Gaul lowerno- > OW(LL) laguern, leuyrn, louern (in place-names, LL pp. 207, 142, 175) > M-eMnW llywern, llewyrn (see below), OCorn louuern > Corn lowarn, OBret Louuern-, Loern (in place- and personal names) > Bret louarn, Vannetais dialect luhern; OIr loarn (in personal and ethnic names); cf. Lat vulpēs, Gk alōpós, Skt lopāṣa ‘a jackal, a fox’. 190 See LHEB §6(3), pp. 279-81, §48(2), p. 384, and §208(B5), pp. 677-8, and CIB ǂ19 at p. 72, ǂ27 at pp. 98-9, ǂ80 at p. 226 n1418, and ǂ84 at p. 231. On forms with lewï- see Schrijver (1995), pp. 61-2, and idem (1998). For discussion of a Continental example, see Louerion in DCCPN p. 151. ‘A fox’, though note that Schrijver in the works cited above argues that forms with lewï- are not plurals < *lowerni-, but derived from *lowernjo- and mean ‘a fox-like thing, a will o’the wisp’. In West Brittonic, as in Goidelic, this seems to have survived mainly or exclusively in place- and personal names. See Breeze in CVEP pp. 67-9 on this element in river-names, and Padel (1978) at p. 24 n10 for personal names. In CA LXXXVIII, Pais Dinogad, the phrase llewyn a llwyvein is apparently a formula referring to a pair of hunters’ quarries, either or both being, perhaps, garbled forms of words related to lowern: see Williams’s note to CA line 324, Jackson’s to YGod (KJ) p. 151, and Jarman’s to YGod (AJ), line 1012. a2) Balernock Dnb (Garelochhead) Ross (2001) p. 23 + bod- + -ǭg: possibly -*lewïrn-, see above, in a lost stream-name, or a personal (saint’s?) name, *Lewïrnǭg. Balornock Lnk CPNS p. 202 + bod- + -ǭg: again, a lost stream-name, or a personal (saint’s?) name, here *Lowernǭg. Carlowrie WLo (Dalmeny) PNWLo p. 5 + cajr-: possibly translated as Foxhall (PNWLo P. 41), see Wilkinson in WLoPN p. 22. Or else + -laβar- or –lǭr-, + -īn.
The name is discussed elsewhere as "Louernoc's hut", from Brythonic, and not a Gaelic baile name (https://www.parliament.scot/Gaelic/placenamesA-B.pdf).
Buthlornoc in 1186 (https://www.theglasgowstory.com/story/?id=TGSAG).
Louernoc, Angl -lornock (saint's name, 'little fox') (http://spns.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Index_of_Celtic_and_Other_Elements.pdf).
As can be seen, the name is a diminutive and means 'Little Fox' - the exact equivalent of the 'vulpiculi' used of Coroticus by Muirchu.
We can now understand the fox transformation story in the Life of St. Patrick differently. The king of Strathclyde is asked to step down and he does so, becoming a hermit. Whether he was given the name Louernoc or merely lived at the hut of a religious bearing that name is debatable. But Muirchu, intent on showing the king's evil nature, instead concocted the tale that Coroticus' own men had used a spell to turn their leader into a little fox.
Madog as fox could easily have been substituted for the vulpiculi of Muirchu's account, as knowledge of the underlying Celtic Louernoc need not be assumed by the Welsh. The little fox in a sense seemed to “succeed” the king, and such a misperception could have led to the mistaken notion that the fox in question was the king's son.
From Alan James on my idea on Coroticus and Louernog:
"*Lowern was apparently a Brittonic given name. Coroticus might have somehow been nicknamed *Lowernog, ‘little fox’, even as insult initially (which Muirchu somehow got to know of), but taken up by his subjects, even by Coroticus himself, as an amusing handle. And if he subse-quently repented and became a hermit in his *bod, that would have been Bod-lowernog, Balornock."
We can now understand the fox transformation story in the Life of St. Patrick differently. The king of Strathclyde is asked to step down and he does so, becoming a hermit. Whether he was given the name Louernoc or merely lived at the hut of a religious bearing that name is debatable. But Muirchu, intent on showing the king's evil nature, instead concocted the tale that Coroticus' own men had used a spell to turn their leader into a little fox.
Madog as fox could easily have been substituted for the vulpiculi of Muirchu's account, as knowledge of the underlying Celtic Louernoc need not be assumed by the Welsh. The little fox in a sense seemed to “succeed” the king, and such a misperception could have led to the mistaken notion that the fox in question was the king's son.
From Alan James on my idea on Coroticus and Louernog:
"*Lowern was apparently a Brittonic given name. Coroticus might have somehow been nicknamed *Lowernog, ‘little fox’, even as insult initially (which Muirchu somehow got to know of), but taken up by his subjects, even by Coroticus himself, as an amusing handle. And if he subse-quently repented and became a hermit in his *bod, that would have been Bod-lowernog, Balornock."
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